A World of My Own: A Dream Diary

      Graham Greene
     A World of My Own: A Dream Diary

Graham Greene was always deeply interested in the role played by the subconscious in his writing, and the private world of his dreams was one that he nurtured carefully, recording it almost daily in his dream diaries.  Selecting from these dream diaries, he prepared this small treasure for publication just before his death in 1991— a last gift from a great writer to delight and entertain his readers. From the Trade Paperback edition.

Read online

  • 1 150

    Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands

      Chris Bohjalian
     Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands

A heartbreaking, wildly inventive, and moving novel narrated by a teenage runaway, from the bestselling author of Midwives and The Sandcastle Girls. **Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands is the story of Emily Shepard, a homeless teen living in an igloo made of ice and trash bags filled with frozen leaves. Half a year earlier, a nuclear plant in Vermont's Northeast Kingdom had experienced a cataclysmic meltdown, and both of Emily's parents were killed. Devastatingly, her father was in charge of the plant, and the meltdown may have been his fault. Was he drunk when it happened? Thousands of people are forced to flee their homes in the Kingdom; rivers and forests are destroyed; and Emily feels certain that as the daughter of the most hated man in America, she is in danger. So instead of following the social workers and her classmates after the meltdown, Emily takes off on her own for Burlington, where she survives by stealing, sleeping on the floor of a drug dealer's apartment, and inventing a new identity for herself -- an identity inspired by her favorite poet, Emily Dickinson. When Emily befriends a young homeless boy named Cameron, she protects him with a ferocity she didn't know she had. But she still can't outrun her past, can't escape her grief, can't hide forever—and so she comes up with the only plan that she can.  A story of loss, adventure, and the search for friendship in the wake of catastrophe, Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands is one of Chris Bohjalian’s finest novels to date—breathtaking, wise, and utterly transporting.

Read online

  • 1 150

    A Soldier of the Great War

      Mark Helprin
     A Soldier of the Great War

From acclaimed novelist Mark Helprin, a lush, literary epic about love, beauty, and the world at war. Alessandro Giuliani, the young son of a prosperous Roman lawyer, enjoys an idyllic life full of privilege: he races horses across the country to the sea, he climbs mountains in the Alps, and, while a student of painting at the ancient university in Bologna, he falls in love. Then the Great War intervenes. Half a century later, in August of 1964, Alessandro, a white-haired professor, tall and proud, meets an illiterate young factory worker on the road. As they walk toward Monte Prato, a village seventy kilometers away, the old man—a soldier and a hero who became a prisoner and then a deserter, wandering in the hell that claimed Europe—tells him how he tragically lost one family and gained another. The boy, envying the richness and drama of Alessandro's experiences, realizes that this magnificent tale is not merely a story: it's a recapitulation of his life, his reckoning with mortality, and above all, a love song for his family.

Read online

  • 1 150

    The Egg and I

      Betty Macdonald
     The Egg and I

When Betty MacDonald married a marine and moved to a small chicken farm on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State, she was largely unprepared for the rigors of life in the wild. With no running water, no electricity, a house in need of constant repair, and days that ran from four in the morning to nine at night, the MacDonalds had barely a moment to put their feet up and relax. And then came the children. Yet through every trial and pitfall—through chaos and catastrophe—this indomitable family somehow, mercifully, never lost its sense of humor. An immortal, hilarious and heartwarming classic about working a chicken farm in the Northwest, a part of which first appeared in a condensed serialization in the Atlantic monthly.

Read online

  • 1 150

    Revenge Kisses

      Addison Moore
     Revenge Kisses

Nothing feels better than revenge. When Knox and I catch our respective plus ones making out, all hell breaks loose. So we do the only thing we can—date one another to drive our exes to the brink. What better way to avoid a rebound than to take control and take each other for the summer? No rules. No holds barred. Everything goes. And at the end of the summer—everything comes to an explosive end. We move on. At least that’s what we planned. But Knox is built for speed both on and off the field with a body sculpted of pure steel. Those eyes, that dirty kissable mouth of his have me on the edge of my quivering seat. So what if we let things go too far one night? So what if he’s actually managed to do things with my body that my ex would never have even conceived? There isn’t anything real between us—this is nothing but a stunt. But things are getting messy, and another broken heart is the last thing I need. But my heart is certainly feeling something, and now I’m not even sure what the hell I signed up for anymore. It’s time to get out—even if it does feel a little too late.

Read online

  • 1 150

    Sarah's Child

      Linda Howard
     Sarah's Child

A tragic accident took everything that mattered to Rome Matthews -- his wife, Diane, and their two little boys. And it robbed Sarah Harper of her best friend. In the two years since the tragedy, Sarah has wanted to reach out to Rome, but she knew she needed to stay away, guarding the secret she had kept from him and Diane all those years -- that she was in love with her best friend's husband. But now Rome needs her. And though another woman will hold his heart forever, Sarah agrees to be his wife, knowing that everything has a price, including love. Then something totally unexpected rekindles her hidden hope that a marriage of convenience will become a union of love. Will Rome keep fighting his own growing need for a woman who dares him to believe there are second chances in life... or will he give in to the healing power of love and miracles?

Read online

  • 1 150

    History of the Plague in London

      Daniel Defoe
     History of the Plague in London

In 1701 Defoe published his "True-born Englishman," a satire upon the English people for their stupid opposition to the continental policy of the King. This is the only metrical composition of prolific Daniel that has any pretensions to be called a poem. It contains some lines not unworthy to rank with those of Dryden at his second-best. For instance, the opening:— "Wherever God erects a house of prayer, The Devil always builds a chapel there; And 'twill be found upon examination The latter has the largest congregation.

Read online

  • 1 149

    Sevastopol

      graf Leo Tolstoy
     Sevastopol

The flush of morning has but just begun to tinge the sky above Sapun Mountain; the dark blue surface of the sea has already cast aside the shades of night and awaits the first ray to begin a play of merry gleams; cold and mist are wafted from the bay; there is no snow—all is black, but the morning frost pinches the face and crackles underfoot, and the far-off, unceasing roar of the sea, broken now and then by the thunder of the firing in Sevastopol, alone disturbs the calm of the morning. It is dark on board the ships; it has just struck eight bells. Toward the north the activity of the day begins gradually to replace the nocturnal quiet; here the relief guard has passed clanking their arms, there the doctor is already hastening to the hospital, further on the soldier has crept out of his earth hut and is washing his sunburnt face in ice-encrusted water, and, turning towards the crimsoning east, crosses himself quickly as he prays to God; here a tall and heavy camel-wagon has dragged creaking to the cemetery, to bury the bloody dead, with whom it is laden nearly to the top. You go to the wharf—a peculiar odor of coal, manure, dampness, and of beef strikes you; thousands of objects of all sorts—wood, meat, gabions, flour, iron, and so forth—lie in heaps about the wharf; soldiers of various regiments, with knapsacks and muskets, without knapsacks and without muskets, throng thither, smoke, quarrel, drag weights aboard the steamer which lies smoking beside the quay; unattached two-oared boats, filled with all sorts of people,—soldiers, sailors, merchants, women,—land at and leave the wharf.

Read online

  • 1 149

    Missing Mom: A Novel

      Joyce Carol Oates
     Missing Mom: A Novel

Nikki Eaton, single, thirty-one, sexually liberated, and economically self-supporting, has never particularly thought of herself as a daughter. Yet, following the unexpected loss of her mother, she undergoes a remarkable transformation during a tumultuous year that brings stunning horror, sorrow, illumination, wisdom, and even—from an unexpected source—a nurturing love.

Read online

  • 1 149

    Through Russia

      Maxim Gorky
     Through Russia

A collection of short stories by the popular and influential Russian author, a founder of the socialist realism literary method and arguably the greatest Russian literary figure of the 20th century. He wrote stories, plays, memoirs and novels which touched the imagination of the Russian people, and was the first Russian author to write sympathetically of such characters as tramps and thieves, emphasizing their daily struggles against overwhelming odds.

Read online

  • 1 149

    In Evil Hour

      Gabriel García Márquez
     In Evil Hour

In Evil Hour is the thrilling story of a Colombian society menaced by rumour and paranoia by the Nobel Laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez, author of the One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera. As a small South American town sweats under an oppressive heat, an unknown person creeps through the night sticking malicious posters to walls and doors. When the contents of one poster lead to a murder, everyone knows that the town is threatened by a malevolent presence - but is there anything that the mayor, the doctor or the priest can do about it? 'In Evil Hour was the book which was to inspire my own career as a novelist. I owe my writing voice to that one book!' Jim Crace 'Belongs to the very best of Marquez's work . . . should on no account be missed' Financial Times 'A splendid achievement' The Times

Read online

  • 1 149

    Come, My Beloved

      Pearl S. Buck
     Come, My Beloved

An American millionaire builds a Christian seminary in India, furthering his spiritual mission—and setting into motion a generations-spanning cycle of miscommunication and fracture within his family Beginning in the 1890s, Come, My Beloved describes an American family’s involvement with India over four generations. Touched by the poverty he encounters in Bombay, self-made millionaire David MacArd establishes a seminary for Christian missionary workers, and in so doing shapes the fates of his son and grandson. The choices made by each generation parallel one another, distinctly marked by the passage of time—though the patriarch remains in New York, the second David becomes a missionary in India himself, while his own son, Ted, goes even further, opting to live in a remote village—and these choices come with unforeseen sacrifices. Nor does their religious journey necessarily mean any growing harmony with their surroundings—something that is powerfully brought home when Ted refuses to let his daughter marry across racial lines. Featuring an unforgettable rendering of India during Gandhi’s rise to power, Come, My Beloved is a family saga of rare power and sensitivity. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Pearl S. Buck including rare images from the author’s estate.

Read online

  • 1 149

    From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler

      E. L. Konigsburg
     From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler

When suburban Claudia Kincaid decides to run away, she knows she doesn’t just want to run from somewhere, she wants to run to somewhere — to a place that is comfortable, beautiful, and, preferably, elegant. She chooses the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Knowing her younger brother Jamie has money and thus can help her with a serious cash-flow problem, she invites him along. Once settled into the museum, Claudia and Jamie find themselves caught up in the mystery of an angel statue that the museum purchased at auction for a bargain price of $225. The statue is possibly an early work of the Renaissance master, Michelangelo, and therefore worth millions. Is it? Or isn’t it? Claudia is determined to find out. Her quest leads her to Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, the remarkable old woman who sold the statue, and to some equally remarkable discoveries about herself.

Read online

  • 1 149

    The Expert's Guide to Driving a Man Wild

      Jessica Clare
     The Expert's Guide to Driving a Man Wild

Being out of control… The product of a rigid upbringing, Brenna has grown into a sexy free spirit who does things her way. No possessions, no debt, no man, and no rules to tie her down. And if she has to work, what better way than as assistant in a wilderness expedition team? So many opportunities to go wild. …can be risky when you’re falling in love. One person who doesn’t “get” Brenna is her boss, Grant. He prefers order and emotions kept in check, which means Brenna loves to push his boundaries. He’d be impossible to work for if he wasn’t so infuriatingly hot. But when his overbearing, matchmaking mother arrives in town, Brenna volunteers to be Grant’s pretend girlfriend. After all, it’s the perfect opportunity to drive Grant crazy at every turn. Brenna’s just a little surprised when Grant agrees to her wild, impulsive schemes. And she’s more than a little surprised when their games take them to the bedroom…

Read online

  • 1 149

    Always a Thief

      Kay Hooper
     Always a Thief

**In a deadly game of skill and deception...A master thief is just the first wild card… **The priceless, rarely displayed Bannister collection is about to be exhibited—and the show’s director, Morgan West, can’t ignore her growing uneasiness. She’s certain she hasn’t seen the last of the infamous cat burglar Quinn. But she never expected him to turn up at her apartment one dark night in desperate need of her help—help she can’t refuse. The mysterious master thief is playing a dangerous game, and it’s a game that just might get him killed. With Morgan’s help, Quinn sets a trap intended to catch someone far more elusive…and more deadly…than a thief. But an unseen threat shadows him in the fog-shrouded San Francisco night, an unknown adversary more cunning than any he has yet encountered. Now, just when the stakes are higher than even Quinn can imagine, no one can be trusted—and everything’s at risk. From the Paperback edition.

Read online

  • 1 149